Tag Archives: Puzzle to solve

Goodbye, Merl.

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[Picture courtesy of crosswordfiend.com.]

The puzzle world was stunned this weekend by the sudden passing of a true crossword legend: Merl Reagle.

Merl has been one of the biggest names in puzzles for a long time now, one of the few crossword constructors who was successful and prolific enough to work on puzzles full-time.

Between his appearance in the Wordplay documentary and a cameo on The Simpsons alongside New York Times crossword editor Will Shortz, he proudly represented both the love of puzzles so many solvers share AND stood as a standard-bearer for crossword construction and quality puzzling.

Merl sold his first crossword to the New York Times at age 16 — ten years after he started constructing puzzles, amazingly enough! In a career spanning five decades, his contributions to the world of puzzles were myriad. Nearly every year, one of his puzzles appears at the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament. The crossword he constructed for the 100th Anniversary of the Crossword was turned into a Google Doodle, and, based on my research, is the most solved crossword puzzle in history.

A craftsman with humor and heart (and no small amount of anagram skill), Merl was truly one of a kind.

[Picture courtesy of tucson.com.]

I had the privilege of meeting him at the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament this year. It was only for a few minutes while the tournament participants were tackling one of the early puzzles and the vendor’s floor was pretty empty. (Otherwise, there were always puzzlers crowded around Merl’s table between tournament puzzles. He was the center of gravity around which many fellow puzzle fans orbited, a master of ceremonies wherever he went.)

He was friendly and gracious, one of those people who can strike an instant rapport with virtually anyone. He put me at ease immediately as I checked out his latest puzzly offerings and we briefly chatted about the tournament itself. (I didn’t get the chance to challenge his legendary anagramming talents, sadly.)

Fellow puzzler and friend of the blog Keith Yarbrough was kind enough to share one of this experiences with Merl:

Merl gave me his philosophy of puzzle construction at the ACPT one year. His goal, he said, was to make the solver smile. Coming up with a funny theme was the main thing. His test when he came up with an idea was to run it past his wife, who is not a puzzler. If it made her smile, it was a keeper.

He wasn’t out to frustrate the solver with obscurities or unnecessary crosswordese, so he used common entries as much as possible. His mantra was that the fill should not be overly difficult.

[Picture courtesy of cltampa.com.]

The dozens of tributes I’ve seen online are a testament to how many friends and admirers Merl earned over the years. There are too many to link to here, but I want to highlight a few from fellow puzzlers Brendan Emmett Quigley, Deb Amlen, and David Steinberg.

Merl, you will be missed. Thank you, for the laughs, for the tough crossings, the trickiest-of-tricky clues, and the many unexpected delights you managed to spring on so many solvers.

You can check out Merl’s work on his Sunday Crosswords website as well as some of his collections on Amazon. Click the links. You won’t regret it.

Thanks for visiting PuzzleNation Blog today! You can share your pictures with us on Instagram, friend us on Facebook, check us out on Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr, and be sure to check out the growing library of PuzzleNation apps and games!

A ten-digit brain teaser to melt your mind!

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I’ve started to develop a reputation as something of a brain-teaser pro, given some of the beastly brain teasers we’ve featured on the blog over the last few months.

And, as such, I’ve started to receive brain teasers from friends and fellow puzzlers, challenging me to unravel them AND explain my methods to the PuzzleNation audience.

I’ve never been one to shirk a challenge, so here we go! This puzzle is entitled Mystery Number, and a little googling after solving it reveals it most likely came from this Business Insider link. (Although their solution is slightly flawed.)

Enjoy!

There is a ten-digit mystery number (not starting with zero) represented by ABCDEFGHIJ, where each numeral, 0 through 9, is used once. Given the following clues, what is the number?

1. A + B + C + D + E = a multiple of 6.
2. F + G + H + I + J = a multiple of 5.
3. A + C + E + G + I = a multiple of 9.
4. B + D + F + H + J = a multiple of 2.
5. AB = a multiple of 3.
6. CD = a multiple of 4.
7. EF = a multiple of 7.
8. GH = a multiple of 8.
9. IJ = a multiple of 10.
10. FE, HC, and JA are all prime numbers.

(And to clarify here for clues 5 through 9, AB is a two-digit number reading out, NOT A times B.)

[Image courtesy of Wikipedia.]

Now, anyone who has solved Kakuro or Cross Sums puzzles will have a leg up on other solvers, because they’re accustomed to dealing with multiple digits adding up to certain sums without repeating numbers. If they see three boxes (which would essentially be A + B + C) and a total of 24, they know that A, B, and C will be 7, 8, and 9 in some order.

[For those unfamiliar with Cross Sums or Kakuro solving, feel free to refer to this solving aid from our friends at Penny/Dell Puzzles, which includes a terrific listing of possible number-combinations that will definitely prove useful with this brain teaser.]

And since the digits 0 through 9 add up to 45, that provides a valuable starting hint for clues 1 and 2 (in which all 10 digits appear exactly once). A multiple of 6 (6, 12, 18, 24, 30, 36, 42) plus a multiple of 5 (5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45) will equal 45. And there’s only one combination that works.

So A + B + C + D + E must equal 30, and F + G + H + I + J must equal 15.

The same logic applies to clues 3 and 4 (in which all 10 digits appear exactly once). A multiple of 9 (9, 18, 27, 36, 45) plus a multiple of 2 (2, 4, 6, 8, 10, etc.) will equal 45. And there’s only one combination that works.

So A + C + E + G + I must equal 27, and B + D + F + H + J must equal 18.

And now, we jump to clue 9. Since IJ is a multiple of 10, and all multiples of 10 end in 0, we know J = 0.

This tells us something about JA in clue 10. J is 0, which means A can only be 2, 3, 5, or 7.

There may a quicker, more deductive manner of solving this puzzle, but I couldn’t come up with it. I went for a brute force, attrition-style solve.

So I wrote out all of the possibilities for clues 5 through 9, and began crossing them off according to what I already knew. Here’s what we start with:

AB = 12, 15, 18, 21, 24, 27, 30, 33, 36, 39, 42, 45, 48, 51, 54, 57, 60, 63, 66, 69, 72, 75, 78, 81, 84, 87, 90, 93, 96, 99
CD = 12, 16, 20, 24, 28, 32, 36, 40, 44, 48, 52, 56, 60, 64, 68, 72, 76, 80, 84, 88, 92, 96
EF = 14, 21, 28, 35, 42, 49, 56, 63, 70, 77, 84, 91, 98
GH = 16, 24, 32, 40, 48, 56, 64, 72, 80, 88, 96
IJ = 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90

Now, we can remove any double numbers like 33 because we know each letter represents a different number.

AB = 12, 15, 18, 21, 24, 27, 30, 36, 39, 42, 45, 48, 51, 54, 57, 60, 63, 69, 72, 75, 78, 81, 84, 87, 90, 93, 96
CD = 12, 16, 20, 24, 28, 32, 36, 40, 48, 52, 56, 60, 64, 68, 72, 76, 80, 84, 92, 96
EF = 14, 21, 28, 35, 42, 49, 56, 63, 70, 84, 91, 98
GH = 16, 24, 32, 40, 48, 56, 64, 72, 80, 96
IJ = 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90

[Sorry guys, you’re out.]

And we know that J = 0, so we can remove any numbers that end in zero for AB, CD, EF, and GH.

AB = 12, 15, 18, 21, 24, 27, 36, 39, 42, 45, 48, 51, 54, 57, 63, 69, 72, 75, 78, 81, 84, 87, 93, 96
CD = 12, 16, 24, 28, 32, 36, 48, 52, 56, 64, 68, 72, 76, 84, 92, 96
EF = 14, 21, 28, 35, 42, 49, 56, 63, 84, 91, 98
GH = 16, 24, 32, 48, 56, 64, 72, 96
IJ = 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90

And for AB, we know that A can only be 2, 3, 5, or 7, so we can delete any numbers that don’t start with one of those four digits.

AB = 21, 24, 27, 36, 39, 51, 54, 57, 72, 75, 78
CD = 12, 16, 24, 28, 32, 36, 48, 52, 56, 64, 68, 72, 76, 84, 92, 96
EF = 14, 21, 28, 35, 42, 49, 56, 63, 84, 91, 98
GH = 16, 24, 32, 48, 56, 64, 72, 96
IJ = 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90

Hmmm, that’s still a LOT of options. What else do we know?

Well, we know from clue 10 that FE and HC are prime numbers. So they can’t be even numbers OR end in a 5. So we can eliminate any options from CD and EF that begin with an even number or a 5.

AB = 21, 24, 27, 36, 39, 51, 54, 57, 72, 75, 78
CD = 12, 16, 32, 36, 72, 76, 92, 96
EF = 14, 35, 91, 98
GH = 16, 24, 32, 48, 56, 64, 72, 96
IJ = 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90

Alright, now we need to look at those big addition formulas again. Specifically, we need to look at B + D + F + H + J = 18.

We know J = 0, so the formula becomes B + D + F + H = 18. Now, take a look at our lists of multiples for AB, CD, EF, and GH. Look at the second digit for each. There’s a little nugget of information hiding inside there.

Every D and H digit is an even number. Which means that B and F must either both also be even, or both be odd in order to make an even number and add up to 18.

But, wait, if they were both even, then they would use all of our even numbers, and some combination of B, D, F and H would be 2 + 4 + 6 + 8, which equals 20. That can’t be right!

So let’s delete any even numbered options from AB and EF.

AB = 21, 27, 39, 51, 57, 75
CD = 12, 16, 32, 36, 72, 76, 92, 96
EF = 35, 91
GH = 16, 24, 32, 48, 56, 64, 72, 96
IJ = 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90

Okay, we’ve whittled down EF to 2 possibilities: 35 and 91. [Here is where the Business Insider solution goes awry, because they never eliminate one of these two options.]

Clue 10 tells us that FE is a prime number, but that doesn’t help, because both 53 and 19 are prime. So now what?

Let’s return to those starting formulas.

We know that A + B + C + D + E = 30, and our handy-dandy number-combination listing tells us there are six possible ways that five digits can add up to 30: 1-5-7-8-9; 2-4-7-8-9; 2-5-6-8-9; 3-4-6-8-9; 3-5-6-7-9; and 4-5-6-7-8.

Look at the possibilities for A, B, C, D, and E according to our work thus far:

AB = 21, 27, 39, 51, 57, 75
CD = 12, 16, 32, 36, 72, 76, 92, 96
EF = 35, 91

There’s not a single 8 in any of those pairings! And five of our six possible answers for A + B + C + D + E = 30 include an 8 as one of the five digits.

Therefore, 3-5-6-7-9 and A-B-C-D-E match up in some order.

EF is either 35 or 91, but with both 3 and 5 counted among the letters in A-B-C-D-E, EF cannot be 35, so EF is 91. Let’s eliminate any option for AB, CD, GH, or IJ that include 9 or 1.

AB = 27, 57, 75
CD = 32, 36, 72, 76
EF = 91
GH = 24, 32, 48, 56, 64, 72
IJ = 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80

Because E = 9, that leaves 3, 5, 6, and 7 as the only possible digits available for A, B, C, and D. So let’s eliminate any combinations that use numbers other than those four.

AB = 57, 75
CD = 36, 76
EF = 91
GH = 24, 32, 48, 56, 64, 72
IJ = 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80

We can also eliminate any combinations for GH and IJ that include those four numbers.

AB = 57, 75
CD = 36, 76
EF = 91
GH = 24, 48
IJ = 20, 40, 80

Since our only possibilities for AB use 5 and 7 in some order, CD cannot be 76, so it must be 36.

AB = 57, 75
CD = 36
EF = 91
GH = 24, 48
IJ = 20, 40, 80

So, here are our options at this point:

AB = 57, 75
CD = 36
EF = 91
GH = 24, 48
IJ = 20, 40, 80

All possible solutions for GH include the number 4, so we can delete 40 as a possibility for IJ.

AB = 57, 75
CD = 36
EF = 91
GH = 24, 48
IJ = 20, 80

Let’s look at those formulas one more time. We know A + C + E + G + I = 27.

We also know C = 3 and E = 9, so A + G + I = 15. And the only combination of available digits that allows for that is 5, 2, and 8, meaning AB = 57, GH = 24, and IJ = 80.

So ABCDEFGHIJ = 5736912480.

I don’t think I’ve tackled a puzzle this tough since the seesaw brain teaser!

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Can you solve BuzzFeed’s 14 Trickiest Crossword Clues?

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Last week, a fellow puzzler passed along this link, which had an intriguing premise. The folks at BuzzFeed asked prominent crossword constructors to contribute their favorite tricky or misleading crossword clues, challenging the audience to puzzle out as many of them as possible.

The constructors involved are a who’s who of top puzzlers, including Ben Tausig, Peter Gordon, Elizabeth C. Gorski, Brendan Emmett Quigley, Matt Gaffney, and several of the puzzlers involved in the Indie 500 tournament: Erik Agard, Neville Fogarty, Andy Kravis, and Evan Birnholz.

There are 14 tricky clues, each with either some crafty wordplay or some delightfully wicked humor attached.

Now, fair warning, some of these are a bit risque (one drops the f-bomb), but they will all put your puzzly skills to the test.

[I wonder how Nancy Drew would do…]

My personal favorites were “Journey accompanier, often [9 letters]” and “Michigan county I promise never to use in a crossword again [6 letters],” both of which involve a level of honesty and pop culture awareness that transcends standard crossing cluing.

I managed to riddle out 10 of the 14 clues. Some of them were vague enough to allow for multiple answers — you don’t have a grid or crossing entries to help you limit options, after all — so I gave myself credit if the correct answer was one of several that came to mind.

How did you do on this crafty BuzzFeed challenge, PuzzleNationers? Let me know! I’d love to hear from you!

Thanks for visiting PuzzleNation Blog today! You can share your pictures with us on Instagram, friend us on Facebook, check us out on Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr, and be sure to check out the growing library of PuzzleNation apps and games!

Crossing swords with crosswordese!

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In the past, I’ve written about crosswordese, nemesis and irritant to many crossword solvers and constructors. For the uninitiated, crosswordese is shorthand for any and all obscure or curious words that you only encounter in crossword grids. From EPEE and OONA to Greek letters (ETA, RHO) and French rivers (AARE), these killer crossings are the bane of any solver’s existence.

And wouldn’t you know it, I encountered some crosswordese in a most unexpected place.

I was reading Patricia Marx’s book Let’s Be Less Stupid: An Attempt to Maintain My Mental Faculties, a humorous look at the common fear that our mental acuity declines as we get older. In the book, Marx references numerous ways she’s noted her brain working less efficiently than it used to, and she hilariously chronicles her attempts to combat this and keep her wits sharp.

As part of her ongoing efforts, she even created a crossword grid utilizing only tough crossword entries.

Her puzzle featured some truly great, funny clues, like “The side of the ship you want to be on if you don’t want your hair to get messed up” for ALEE and “No matter how bad your memory is, this is something to remember” for ALAMO.

While I wouldn’t count every entry in her grid as crosswordese, there were plenty of major offenders on her list. (You can check out the full puzzle in her book!)

And this gave me an idea. I would try my hand at creating my own 9×9 grid, composed entirely of crosswordese, utilizing some of the words from her list and some from lists submitted by fellow puzzlers.

[Forgive my nonstandard grid. I tried to go for the same homemade charm as Marx’s grid. Feel free to print out this post and try it out!]

ACROSS

1. Toward shelter, to salty types
3. Arrow poison OR how a child might describe their belly button in writing
5. Flightless bird OR Zeus’s mother
6. Hireling or slave
8. “Kentucky Jones” actor OR response akin to “Duh”
9. Compass dir. OR inhabitant’s suffix
12. Wide-shoe width OR sound of an excited squeal
15. No longer working, for short OR soak flax or hemp
16. Like a feeble old woman OR anagram of a UFO pilot
17. Actress Balin OR Pig ____ poke

DOWN

1. Mean alternate spelling for an eagle’s nest
2. Old-timey exclamation
3. Unnecessarily obscure French river or part of the Rhone-Alpes region
4. Supplement OR misspelling of a popular cat from a FOX Saturday morning cartoon
7. Maui goose
10. An abbreviated adjective covering school K through 12 OR how you might greet a Chicago railway
11. My least favorite example of crosswordese OR good and mad
12. Ornamental needlecase
13. Movie feline OR “Frozen” character
14. Shooting marble OR abbreviation for this missing phrase: “truth, justice, and ____”

Did you conquer this crosswordese-riddled grid? And what’s your least favorite example of crosswordese? Let me know! I’d love to hear from you!

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It’s Follow-Up Friday: Sharknado puzzle edition!

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Welcome to Follow-Up Friday!

By this time, you know the drill. Follow-Up Friday is a chance for us to revisit the subjects of previous posts and bring the PuzzleNation audience up to speed on all things puzzly.

And today, we’re returning to the subject of holidays.

I like to talk about puzzly holidays, but this week has marked more of a cinematic holiday.

Yes, for the third summer in a row, a Sharknado movie has rampaged across our screens, bringing ridiculous action and inexplicable acts of shark-fighting heroism to millions of viewers.

And I thought to myself, what better way is there to mark the occasion than to create a Sharknado-themed deduction puzzle?

So that’s exactly what I did! Enjoy!

Sharknados are terrorizing cities across America! Every day, one of our heroes (April, Claudia, Fin, Gilbert, or Nova) has bravely ventured into a sharknado-afflicted city, armed with a weapon (baseball bat, chainsaw, grenade, laser, or rifle.)

No two heroes were in the same city on the same day, and no hero used any weapon more than once. No weapon was used more than once in the same day, nor was any weapon used more than once in the same city. Can you complete the schedule chart below?

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It takes two to puzzle…

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I’m always on the lookout for new and different puzzle styles to discuss here, because there’s a seemingly endless supply of puzzly inventiveness in the world, and I endeavor to share as much of it as possible with my fellow PuzzleNationers.

A few days ago, I was reminded of a brain teaser variation that’s a little different from our usual fare, and I thought I’d put it in the spotlight.

Today, we’re talking about guided lateral thinking puzzles!

Let me start you off with a standard lateral thinking puzzle (which is a fancy way of saying “brain teaser”). This one is an all-time favorite of mine:

A man is found murdered on the floor with 53 bicycles scattered around the room. How did he die?

Now, this may sound like a particularly violent end at a local bike shop, but the lateral thinkers and brain teaser proficient types out there have probably already sussed out the true answer.

The man cheated at cards and was killed for it. Bicycle is a famous brand of playing cards, and with 52 cards in your standard deck, 53 implies cheating.

That’s a pretty simple one.

The difference between regular brain teasers like that one and guided lateral thinking puzzles is that a guided lateral thinking puzzle requires two people: one to ask questions in the hopes of solving it, and the other to know the solution and answer the other player’s questions with only yes or no responses.

The scenarios are often more involved than your usual brain teaser, but you’re only given a brief story to start with. These are not rigid brain teasers like the seesaw one we tackled earlier this year. These puzzles depend on your ability to narrow down the possibilities with strategically worded questions.

Here’s an example of a guided lateral thinking puzzle:

Ann, Ben, and Chris are siblings who were conceived on the same day. This year, Ann will be attending third grade while Ben and Chris attend kindergarten. Why?

While you could try to come up with a solution with just this information, guided lateral thinking puzzles encourage you to talk through your suspicions as you ask questions and uncover the truth.

So, what would you ask? What’s your starting theory? (My first instinct was to go straight to imagining how Leap Day was involved, before quickly realizing that was a ridiculous supposition.)

But maybe you have a better theory. Were they conceived by different people? Was it the same day, but different years?

Posing these questions to your partner in puzzly crime could help you find the answer.

The folks at I09 posted a link to six guided lateral thinking puzzles (including the Ann/Ben/Chris one I mentioned above). Give it a listen and try cracking these puzzles alongside the podcasters!

And let me know how you did! Did you solve any of them right away? Did any of them thoroughly stump you? And would you like to see more puzzles like this on PuzzleNation Blog in the future?

Thanks for visiting PuzzleNation Blog today! You can share your pictures with us on Instagram, friend us on Facebook, check us out on Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr, and be sure to check out the growing library of PuzzleNation apps and games!